SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, TOO BIG IS UGLY

Trading is arguably the core activity in all market economies. Free trade is the mantra of all economists -left, right and center. Trading is considered indispensible and more trade is always seen as better. The financial crisis caused a closer look at trade and financial traders to see if these conventional beliefs are still valid and whether stock markets have spun out of control.

CUBA: THE INVISIBLE FUTURE

If a person's past is the accumulation of the life experiences that made him who he is, the future embodies the dreams and the expectations of what this person wants to be and what he needs to have a better life, materially and spiritually. This ability to direct one's gaze forward and try to extract from the present the qualities of the future is one of the intrinsic components of the human condition and the source of people's and societies' ability to endure.

AFGHANISTAN: Abdullah Plays For Time

Soon after President Hamid Karzai acceded to a runoff two weeks ago, challenger Abdullah Abdullah put forward an avalanche of requests so complex, that his objective remains unclear.

20 YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL: THE STORY CONTINUES

Twenty years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the shameful symbols of the Cold War and the dangerous division of the world into opposing blocks and spheres of influence. Today we can revisit the events of those times and take stock of them in a less emotional and more rational way.

CLIMATE CHANGE: ACT NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

It's clear that climate change poses severe environmental, economic, and social risks. But it also presents a challenge of leadership the likes of which the world has never seen. Can heads of state and governments meet it when they gather in Copenhagen in December to hammer out a new international climate agreement?

FUNDS WITHOUT FUNDS: THE CHILEAN CASE

Riding the recent exuberance of emerging markets, Chilean pension funds have reduced to almost half the immense losses they suffered since the onset of the global economic crisis. But it won't help much.

WHY IS THE PEACE MOVEMENT SO QUIET ABOUT AFGHANISTAN?

While the war in Iraq triggered massive demonstrations across the globe, the ratcheting up of the number of troops in Afghanistan has generated no more than brief debates in parliaments. Obviously the intervention in Afghanistan if far more "legitimate" than the invasion of Iraq, based as if was on false assumptions about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, it is still significant that the Afghan war, with its high human costs, is accepted as inevitable and that even the world peace movement seems resigned to it.

THE PRIVATISATION OF LIVELIHOOD

Globalisation and trade liberalisation policies have led to the privatisation of water and biodiversity and the concentration of land ownership in India, reversing six decades of land reform and introducing a new form of corporate zamindari -a feudal land tenure system- through instruments like "special economic zones".

DEATH OF THE DAILY PAPER

It is a major catastrophe: dozens of daily newspapers are bankrupt. In the United States, at least 120 have already closed. And the tsunami is now striking Europe. Not even institutions once considered the journals of record are safe: Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde, The Times and The Independent of the United Kingdom. and Italy's Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica are all accumulating major economic losses as a result of the drop in subscriptions and the collapse of advertising[i].

NOBEL TO OBAMA: THE RIGHT TIME, THE RIGHT PERSON

The news was like a ray of sunlight that lit the entire world: "Obama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize!" It was unexpected, for many premature, and set off a wide range of reactions in every corner of the planet.

A CULTURE OF PEACE – THE TIME HAS COME

The time has come. The culture of war, the economy of war, and the hegemony of the "globalisers" have been a catastrophic failure and the cause of incalculable levels of suffering, hunger, extreme poverty, and social affliction. A "new beginning" is needed urgently here at the dawn of a new century and a new millennium.

LOW-INTENSITY PROTECTIONISM, SO FAR

World economic growth, as measured by the world's production of goods and services, has slowed abruptly in 2008 and the early part of this year. The contraction in demand led to a slowdown in production, and in international trade. World merchandise trade is projected to fall by a full 10 per cent this year, and foreign direct investment, which fell by 15 per cent in 2008, is projected to drop further.

CRISIS SLOWS NORTH-TO-SOUTH INVESTMENT

The current crisis has precipitated a significant downturn in world foreign direct investment (FDI) flows which over the past year has spread to all sectors and regions. 2008 marked the end of a growth cycle in international investment that began in 2003 and reached a historic high of nearly $2 trillion in 2007.

CUBA: START THE DEBATE

Cuba's official newspaper and organ of the Communist Party recently published a story that stunned the populace: in a country where the lack of food has become endemic and causes the people dire economic hardship, it happened that tonnes of agricultural products were left to rot outside the city of Havana because there were neither the containers nor the vehicles nor the organisational capacity to transport them.

WHY SHOULD WE ABOLISH NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Why should we abolish nuclear weapons?

THE NEXT FINANCIAL CRISIS IS JUST A MATTER OF TIME

US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's rejection of the European request for regulation of bank executives' bonuses has given rise to various interpretations: some cite President Barack Obama's need to avoid more confrontations with the American right wing, others point to the influence of the historical bond between the US and the UK, the only European country to defend financial corporations.

G-20: REFORM THE GLOBAL CASINO

The awful truth is emerging: globalised rogue finance is disordering human societies and destroying our ecological life-support systems on a global scale. A spate of books and studies examining the role of finance finds deep flaws in the way money is created and credit is allocated. The age-old invention of money, which extended opportunities for trading beyond barter, has become a computerised global monster. Blind to other human values and goals, this global casino has decoupled and abstracted from real economies.

A BITTER PILL FROM THE DRUG INDUSTRY

The conclusions of the final European Commission report on competition abuses in the pharmaceutical industry, released on July 8, are shocking and have wide-ranging ramifications. And yet the media have largely failed to cover it.

THE LONG EXILE FROM MOTHER EARTH

Today there are two fundamentally different ways in which people consider the Earth. For many it is simply a vast material object lacking spirit and bequeathed to the human race to exploit as it wills. For others, it is our home, a self-regulating superorganism with a unique community of life.

THE LONG EXILE FROM MOTHER EARTH

Today there are two fundamentally different ways in which people consider the Earth. For many it is simply a vast material object lacking spirit and bequeathed to the human race to exploit as it wills. For others, it is our home, a self-regulating superorganism with a unique community of life.

TEDDY KENNEDY: A CHAMPION OF JUSTICE

It was deeply moving to see crowds lining the streets from Hyannis Port to Boston, from the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to Hanscom Field, and from Andrews Air Force Base to Arlington Cemetery, -often ten deep- holding placards, waving American flags, saluting; each with her or his own story of being touched by Senator Edward KennedyÂ's vision, spirit and love. People came because they appreciated his courageous stances on international human rights, civil rights, health care, minimum wage, support in multiple forms for the oppressed and dispossessed. And mostly because they knew he loved people--not the people, but actual, living, breathing human beings.